Lauren Painter

10/02/12 REFLECTION
For todays class we had to pick up where we left off on Thursday. Our groups got together and went over our specified chapters in Aristotles text on rhetoric. My group had Chapter 7, which was a long, elaborated portion of the work. This particular chapter was seemingly, more so based on detailed examples from ideas presented in Chapters 5 and 6. I personally did not find this chapter as enjoyable as the others were (besides 10; that one is also torturous). Aristotle is logical, we all know that, but he is so descriptive and is set in his ways of providing logical, sensible support to balance his arguments that it can get lost in translation, which is the main problem my group had with this chapter. It seems so muddled with words but he is really only supplying examples from the previous chapters. While drawing on the board, we decided to draw Politics Bear as usual (especially due to the politics coming up tomorrow night!) holding a glass of water, where we inserted the bullet points. We did this to emphasize one of Aristotles important lines in the chapter: The best of things is water. He then goes on to explain how water is useful and good, and relates it to the everyday use of rhetoric. For our bullet points, we took the main point out of each large paragraph in order to summarize it, so we had seven total bullets. However, this task was most definitely not easy since its a large amount of text and mumbo-jumble mixed-up into one chapter. What I found to be most prominent was how he stated, basically, that how a man wants to seem means less than how a man wants to be. This talks, I believe, about personal happiness, and that trying to seem one way is not as great and good as actually being it. The rest of class consisted of talking about the roman period relating to rhetoric. I found it funny how the power shifted from Athens to Rome, when it was the center of dominant power. We discussed the four classes, which was similar to the classes we have today. There was the Patrician class, which was the wealthy; Equestrian, the Roman cavalry, tax collectors, bankers, miners, and general traders; Plebian, which were the middle class of todays society of what I got from itthe working class (but less than middle class); and the Slaves, which were the lowest of the low (somewhat like the people who collect unemployment, the homeless, etc.) who worked for other people as servants and were sold, traded, and treated poorly. Canons were explained in the brief PowerPoint slide in class. This was brought upon by the introduction of Rhetorica & Herennium, the first major text on rhetoric. The canons are disposito (arrangement), exordium, narration, division, refutation, and conclusion. I found this to be useful information since canons are used in everyday material, even in our modern-day society and politics happening currently (definitely exordium and refutation). Continuing from canons, we were introduced to Cicero, who wrote De Oratore (which we will read for Thursdays class). Cicero is a huge part of rhetoric and basically constructed these canons as well as Quintilian. What struck me humorously was how he was decapitated and had his tongue pierced in the assembly after becoming enemies with Mark Antony.